Since setting that deer mouse outside Sunday we'd had a nagging doubt. If she were pregnant, and had a nest of babies inside the house, would she get back to it in time? We listened for the peeping of needful baby mice but heard nothing, but if the mouse were any good at her business it would be hard for interlopers to notice them.
Yesterday ![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunny_hugger noticed in the live trap that she had meant to disable the evening before that the deer mouse was back in it. (Or one looking just like her, anyway.) So she was able to get back into the house and was apparently not shy about traps. And she was even more obviously nursing, albeit not at that moment. So, we set her back loose; she can have the three weeks it takes to wean baby deer mice to live here in comfort before they have to go back to the garage. Which, since by then it'll be warm --- I note yesterday morning it got below freezing for the first time in a week --- they'll maybe stay outside.
If they are there, since we of course lack a needed clarity. The trouble is bunny_hugger spotted the mouse in the afternoon, and deer mice are normally inactive during the day. I didn't hear the trap spring; I thought I heard some rustling around but since I didn't see anything I didn't suspect anything but loose paper by a heating vent. If the mother mouse was trapped from, like, the night before then her babies might have gone without nursing too long to survive. But if she'd been in the trap for only an hour or so, what is a mouse doing prowling around the middle of the afternoon?
So we can't know for sure until we see a large and a small deer mouse together. Our pet mice, being an incredibly different species, able to offer no advice.
In Dutch Wonderland pictures now, I bring you a ride I went on by myself, as bunny_hugger could not be paid to endure it. What ride is that? ... Lock your guesses in please and then enjoy me ...
Starting on the Sky Ride. The miniature railroad is underneath in the corner of the picture and I had seen them stop the Sky Ride so the train could unload and reload passengers and move on.
On the Sky Ride, watching Merlin's Mayhem going through a helix.
Here I look down and can see my feet totally on top of Merlin's Mayhem's track! That's how perspective works, right?
And a picture looking down from above Merlin's Mayhem's track.
Here's a view looking down the lift hill for Merlin's Mayhem and catching the ride almost ready to dispatch.
There's the carousel looking like a toy.
And here's one of the flat rides that I think we passed on, but it's one where you lie down and experience flying.
From above, Merlin's Mayhem's loading station and gift shop don't look hardly themed at all. You can see the monorail station in the background.
View from above at one of the booths with animated marionettes inside. The people there are looking at the quilting bee, I believe.
In the distance here's the Fun Slide, or the Nuf Edils backwards, as well as much of Kingdom Coaster. Also a barbecue place where I think we got a drink refill at one point.
View into one of the performing venues, this one used for diving shows. There happened not to be one when I took this ride; I believe in the 2010 visit I happened to get a picture of someone diving as seen from the Sky Ride. The blue tower is one of the Sky Ride's support towers.
And we come to the end of the Sky Ride, over another performing space with a show we didn't catch a trace of.
Trivia: As early as 1914 Anheuser-Busch's executive committee considered removing German names from their beer labels in the United States. They did remove them from bottles sold in Australia and Canada. August A Busch took to wearing an American flag button in his lapel. Source: Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, Daniel Okrent. Gustave Pabst's son, meanwhile, enlisted in the Marines.
Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine Volume 87: Nonny the Equine Genius!, Ralph Stein, Bill Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle. Oh, this is the story introducing Burlo, the evil twin of Bluto that you totally ever heard of before! And he ... doesn't actually have a lot to do with the story because it turns out the Popeye comic strip survived like 80 years before finally getting a writer who had any idea what to do with a story after its premise came out.
